Quotes About Writing

There go more italics! But a few italics really do relieve your feelings.

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would NOT behave properly.

One of the reviews says the book radiates happiness and optimism. When I think of the conditions of worry and gloom and care under which it was written I wonder at this. Thank God, I can keep the shadows of my life out of my work. I would not wish to darken any other life - I want instead to be a messenger of optimism and sunshine.

Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

She understood that she must not write merely to win fame for herself or even for the higher motive of pure pleasure in her work. She must aim, however humbly, to help her readers to higher planes of thought and endeavor. Then and only then would it be worth while.

I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but that isn't hard for I've millions of ideas.

Escribiría sobre gente y lugares que yo conociera, y haría que mis personajes hablaran un lenguaje cotidiano. Y dejaría que el sol se levantara y se pusiera de la forma normal y tranquila que hace normalmente, sin hacer muchas alharacas al respecto. Si tuviera que introducir un villano en mi historia, le daría una oportunidad (...) Supongo que hay algunos hombres malvados en el mundo, pero hay que andar un buen rato para encontrarlos.

I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne—I'd give them a chance.

I wrote a chapter. A burden rolled away from my spirit. And I was suddenly back in my own world with all my dear Avonlea and Glen folks again. It was like going home...

But here and now I record this vow, most solemnly, in my diary, My pen shall heal, not hurt.

I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn't get them to please me. They seem so still and foolish directly they're written down on white paper and black ink. Fancies are like shadows... you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things. But perhaps I'll learn the secret someday if I keep trying.

It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.

There is only one realm in which characters defy natural laws and remain the same—the realm of bad writing. And its the fixed nature of the characters which makes the writing bad. If a character in a short story, novel, or play occupies the same position at the end as the one he did at the beginning, that story, novel, or play is bad.

There is only one realm in which characters defy natural laws and remain the same—the realm of bad writing. And it is the fixed nature of the characters that make the writing bad.

We get to play God with our stories.

Writing is a two-party democracy. To the left are those who write stories from their heart, or according to the other side of the aisle, from the seat of their pants. On the right are those who write stories from a meticulously constructed outline.

See this page of paper? It's blank," Scull said. "That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir—this page and hundreds like it. Let me tell you, Colonel, it's harder than fighting Lee. Why, it's harder than fighting Napoleon. It requires unremitting attention

One reason I've hung on to book selling is that it's progressive—the opposite of writing, pretty much. Eventually all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse. No reason to name names, since no one is spared. Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energized or realized forever. Strong talents can simply exhaust their gift, and they do.

I was just doodling at the typewriter

He was embarked, at the time, on a book sighing—I insist, sighing, not signing, though he's pretty adept at that too.

For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.

newspaper at that very table, and was racing

Ma wrote them down with her little red pen that had a mother-of-pearl handle shaped like a feather. When her neat, clear writing filled the paper she turned it and filled it again crosswise. On the other side of the paper she did the same thing so that every inch of paper held all the words that it possibly could.

Sure, writing has its moments of sublimity - grasping after the ineffable, realizing something just out of reach - yet at every instance modulated by the chronic substratum of shame about having taken a dump in public. - Humiliation Artists